Detective Grace Winston walked
up to the well-lit front porch of the Acadian-style home and surveyed the
scene. The door frame was splintered and the door hung precariously on its
damaged hinges.

Detective Brandon Sharper appeared
in the hallway in front of Grace and smiled. “Glad you could make it.”

“I do have a personal life, you
know.” Grace photographed the damage and the surrounding area. She then took a
close-up of a single bullet hole that was centered in the wooden door, about
chest high. She looked up at her partner. “What do we know so far?”

“Clear case of justifiable
homicide,” Brandon said.

Grace picked her way into the
house, careful not to step on any evidence. The hallway extended from the door
to the living room, where an evidence cone marked the location of a spent shell
casing. Brandon pointed to the casing. “That’s about where Beverly Shaw’s
boyfriend was standing when he fired the shot.”

“Is it true her ex-husband is
the victim?”

“Suspect,” he corrected. “He
came here to break into the house and attack them. But yeah, it was her
ex-husband. His name’s Jerry Klein. He didn’t survive the ride to the hospital.
Died in the ambulance, about five minutes out.”

“I want to talk to the
boyfriend.”

“Follow me.” Brandon led Grace
to a neighbor’s house, where they found Beverly Shaw and Trent Snell sitting in
the kitchen, talking quietly with each other. Beverly’s face was white and her
voice shook when she introduced herself.

“I’ll need to speak with him.”
Grace waved Trent over and led him to the living room. She pointed to the sofa
and when he was seated, said, “So, tell me what happened.”

Trent shook his head. “It was
really scary. I had come over to spend the night with Beverly, because she was
afraid that her ex-husband would come over and start trouble. He’s given her
nothing but trouble since they split up, you know?”

“Looks like her fears were
valid.”

“Yeah, we heard a knock at the
door and it scared Beverly. She gave me her gun and I walked out into the
hallway and that’s when he kicked the door open.” Trent shook his head. “I
yelled at him to stop, but he ran toward me. I didn’t know if he was armed, so
I fired out of fear for my life and Beverly’s life.”

“How many shots did you fire?”

“Only one.”

Grace instructed him to return
to the kitchen and she interviewed Beverly next.

“Thank God Trent was with me,”
said a tearful Beverly. “Otherwise, I’d be the one dead.”

“How long have you been
divorced?”

“Oh, we’re not divorced yet.
We’ve only been separated for three months. I would’ve had to wait seven more
months before the divorce could be final.”

“Did you see the shooting?”

Beverly shook her head,
shuddered. “I heard it and that was bad enough. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever
experienced. I heard Trent yelling for Jerry to leave and then I heard one
shot. I came out the bedroom and saw Jerry lying on the ground in the hallway. He’d
almost made it to the living room.”

Grace frowned. “Why do you think
Jerry came over?”

Beverly sighed. “Probably to beg
me to take him back. He does that every couple of weeks and then he gets mad
when I tell him it’s over for good. He threatened me the last time he came
over, so I bought a gun for protection.”

* * *

“It’s a clear case of
justifiable homicide,” Brandon told Grace when they were back at the crime
scene. “Open and shut.”

“Not so fast.” Grace pointed to
the porch. “Spray this area with the luminol solution.”

Brandon scratched his head. “But
he was shot inside.”

“Just do it.”

Once Brandon applied the
solution, the floor of the porch glowed bright blue and showed a trail of blood
from there to the hall where Jerry’s body had been located.